Ghost from the Past
by TigerBadger
Summary: (Note: I like to think up exorbitant back stories on occasion, even for characters that already have them. I wanted to make her past more tragic, and then bring it back to haunt her) Here Inara Cousland confronts the assassin she saved while at the same time trying to reign in her inner demons. A man who's a painful reminder of all she lost. Probably more K but went T to be sure


It was late. The sky was wide and cloudless, and even if she wanted to count the stars it would take more nights than she had left in this world to do so. Instead of trying she stared into the glowing embers of their dying camp fire, counting the short, gasping flames reaching beyond the coals. Their pitiful attempts to reignite the charred wood looked more like death throes. The wind had died down, yet wispy tendrils of smoke found their way to Inara. The fragrance of the burnt embers permeated her clothes, her hair, her skin it seemed. Better than smelling blood, sweat and the stink of travel. If she could have stood the pain she would have bathed in those hot ashes.

The slight breeze stayed the touch of winter's cold embrace tonight. The others had retired to their tents long ago, except for Leliana. They had spoken for a while, much longer than they had in years. Leliana called it making up for lost time. Inara hadn't realized how much she had missed her old friend, and told her about her travels to Antiva and elsewhere. It was hard to talk of Solan, but eventually Leli got her to talk about his illness. How he died frail and broken, and no prayers to the Maker or Andraste or the Black City or the Arch Demon saved him. There was no one to hear her, only empty promises from mortals that the Maker had his reasons, that it was his time. Bullshit covering bullshit.

Inara sat watching the fire's slow and painful death. Her talk with Leli left her feeling empty. Empty of hate, of sorrow, of happiness. A shell of a woman. The only thing that kept her in that seat by the fire was knowing that she had to continue. She had to fight through to the Arch Demon. To end the Blight. Hopefully she'd die along with it so she wouldn't have to live in a world where everyone she loved had been taken from her. If she thought that praying would work, that's what she'd pray for. A meaningful, vengeful death. Vengeance against a world that betrayed her.

There was a shuffling noise behind her. The kind of noise someone made to ensure they were heard. The kind to make sure they didn't get killed for sneaking up on someone. Inara turned her head slightly and forced her eyes away from the glowing fire. She tensed as she watched Zevran step over the fallen log she sat on, the blanket around his shoulder dragging over it. She looked back at the fire, not wanting to see the face so similar to Solan's they could have been brothers, twins even.

"May I sit with you a while my dear?"

Inara squeezed her eyes shut and her jaw clenched as she determined to say no. But even her desire to keep that living memory away from her waned, at least for the night. Instead she nodded, though she didn't look at him directly, just through the corner of her vision.

"Thank you, it's too beautiful a night to spend it alone, no?" He kept his voice low, not the loud and boastful tone he has used since Inara spared him. This is more intimate, cautious even.

"If you say so."

Zevran reached in front of her to take a couple thin logs in one hand and set them neatly on the coals, bringing the fire back to life while keeping the blanket tucked around him with the other. It brushed Inara as he leaned over, causing goose bumps to pop up on her exposed forearms. He was still wearing his leather under the blanket, but she saw no weapons sheathed. He sat down close to her, but she couldn't tell if he did it to bother her or if he just wanted to stay warm.

"I have no idea how you can stand sitting out here with no fire and just a thin shirt my dear," Zevran said with a wavering voice. Was he really that cold? "In Antiva, it rarely gets cold enough to wear sleeves. I'm surprised you're not frozen solid."

"I'm used to it." Inara knew she sounded blunt, even if she wasn't trying to. For her it was like talking to a ghost.

"Ah yes. The lady from the freezing north, the beautiful ice queen of Fereldon. I'm sure there are many men waiting to see if they can melt your frozen heart."

Inara snorted with derision. "No one waits for me that I care for."

"But how can you know if you do not open yourself to possibility, no?"

The elf leaned forward and closer to Inara and she saw him better. His hair was lighter and longer, and his skin more sun kissed, but all she saw was love lost. It hit her harder than any weapon strike could and left her unable to breath. She was no coward though and turned to face her ghost assassin.

"What do you want from me?" Pain that she had forgotten about and buried dug its way up from the grave she made inside. "Why would they send you? To torment me to death?"

She didn't raise her voice, but the force of her agony left Zevran unprepared to defend against it. She stared into his eyes, waited for him to reveal himself as the assassin of her sanity. Instead he was trapped by her gaze, surprised at the intensity of her interrogation. He held up his free hand in surrender, silently begging for her to release him.

"Please, my dear Warden," he whispered. He sounded as if he'd been choked. "I swear to you that I do not wish to torment you, far from it. I was to assassinate you, this is true. But," he paused, reaching over to touch her cheek, brushing away a single tear that had escaped Inara's glistening eyes. "Not this."

Inara flinched but didn't back away. "What do you want from me, Zevran?" she repeated. She forced dirt back over her heart's coffin, keeping the pain from her monotone voice.

"My lovely Warden, I want more than I should ask, but since you force my hand." He adjusted the blanket with both hands and wrapped it around him. Inara watched him, motionless inside and out, waiting on edge. "I want to thank you, for sparing my life. I came here expecting to die. I happy to say I'm pleasantly surprised with my current circumstances, cold aside."

"I had to," Inara said without thinking. Her eyes went wide for her mistake, but Zevran seemed to be focused only on his own words.

"I want to help you dear lady. In your quest here. I want to see you smile, you seem so unhappy I feel it's my duty to rectify it."

She shook her head trying to force out the thought of Solan saying those words. "No, that's not…"

"And I want to apologize for the discomfort I've caused you." She stared back at the elf, and his eyes held sorrow as she searched his features for any sign of deception.

"What do you mean?" she asked accusingly.

"I know that my presence has caused you distress. I know that who you are now is not who you were. I know that your heart was not always frozen and guarded."

"How would you know anything?" Inara hissed. Her anger started to rise to cover her buried feelings.

Until Zevran continued. "Because I know you, I knew Solan, and I've seen you happy."

Even if she could have said something, she wouldn't have known what. The wall surrounding her pain cracked, and any movement, any word, would cause it to crumble around her.

"We never met, for obvious reasons. But I watched you, and Solan. With my friends we made sure to keep you safe during the music festivals from other envious houses that would harm you to keep you from competing. I heard you play. The two of you, there could never have been a better pair."

Inara, even with all the emotion wracked and trapped in her shell could still hear a hint of resentment from him. Her breath came is short, shallow gasps. Her body forced her to keep going.

"At the time, I was insanely jealous," Zevran smiled as he said it. "To know a love like that, I would have burned the world. I can see what it did to you though. And I know what it did to me when I found it." He looked away from her and watched the fire climbing again. "You can't go back once it's gone. You look at me and you see a ghost. I know this. I'm truly sorry. I know that I have no right to ask you, but I will anyway. I beg you to let me stay. In a way, you are a piece of home. It's selfish of me to cause you pain, but I can't go home again. You are the closest thing there is for me now."

Inara felt herself dangerously close to breaking. She didn't trust herself to speak, so she watched him. In that moment he looked real, not a ghost, not Solan. He looked open and raw like fresh wound. When he spoke he looked honest with no hint of sarcasm. He looked scared as he waited for her to say something. Anything. Even when he pled for his life he was not as serious as there with his face aglow by the flames.

"What songs did you like best?" Inara asked, not know how she wanted to answer him.

"What?" He didn't seem to expect her response, but regained his composure quickly. "I seem to remember you and your friends had an endless list of music to choose from. The first time you came to Antiva City I don't think you played a single song twice."

His face broke into a smirk as he chuckled at his memory. Inara knew he was right, and wondered how much else he remembered from her travels there.

"Honestly, there are many songs I remember, but it's the instruments I remember best. I never understood how you all could trade them with each other and play anything. But it was that strange lute things you played, you and your Solan. When you played you looked free. Your face, your body, your soul, completely liberated."

The silence between them didn't hold the tension it did a moment ago. As Zevran spoke Inara felt the memory of it. What it felt like to play, to create the music that made up a large part of her life and share her vision with the world. Their vision. All lost. Deep in memories that had been comfortably buried until Leli, and dug up again by this elf who shared more with her then she thought possible.

"It's called a kitar," she managed to say.

"Ah."

"How do I know you weren't listening earlier when…?" Inara couldn't finish her thought. The pain behind her outpouring to Leli was still fresh.

"I did hear my darling." Before Inara could react to accuse him of lying he continued. "My tent is not so far away as the others. I like to stay close to the fire. But never mind that. I heard, yes, yet all I have said is true."

"Prove it," Inara challenged. "You could have pieced all that together yourself. You're not an idiot."

"Thank you, for the vote of confidence my lady. I did not come out here to continue to bring up painful memories. But if you insist."

He cleared his throat and Inara saw the fog his breath formed. It billowed out and disappeared in the smoke rising above the camp fire. He frowned and stared into the fire, silent and thinking.

"Well?"

"You practiced on the rooftops when you thought you were able to sneak out without being seen." Inara snapped her head to face him. "You'd play so softly, hum so quiet I had to get dangerously close to hear it. It was worth it though."

Inara's memory recreated the picture Zevran painted. She used to write her songs in private. Very rarely did she ever let Solan listen. For her, songwriting was an intensely private experience. So much that even hearing him admit it made heat rise to her cheeks, like he found her naked.

But he wasn't done. "You and your love, the first time in Antiva City, snuck out late at night to explore the town. I followed of course. I was charged with keeping an eye on you." He laughed as he spoke. "To keep you both safe and alive. I nearly broke my cover when you two were, hmm, exploring each other as another group of young men thought they could take advantage of you. The way you hid your weapons, and the way you two retrieved them, genius."

"We knew they were going to cause trouble, that's why we started," Inara said but couldn't finish the thought.

"I know that now, not at the time though. You dispatched them so gracefully, you and your elf." Inara wasn't sure if he avoided saying Solan's name on purpose. "It was an art form as beautiful as your music."

"Oh." Inara didn't need to hear anymore.

"And I remember your anger, wrath that was so powerful it cowed all around you when vandals from another House destroyed your big drum, and cut all the strings and cracked one of your, kitars? Yes that."

"You don't have…" Inara said, but Zevran was lost in the memory he was retelling.

"Never before or since has anyone in the Crows witnessed that level of pure rage. No one has even dared use your tactics to get the information you desired, so deceptively brutal." Zevran smiled into the fire. The light danced on his face and for a moment she thought he was finished. "You could have taken out an entire House of Crows by yourself that night. The three men you did certainly persuaded their leader to pay you recompense. It was glorious to watch you work."

Finally it was quiet. The silence between them stretched as Inara continued to watch this strange elf who seemed to know so much about her. Zevran managed to keep himself staring at the fire and avoided her gaze.

"You obviously didn't stick around for the aftermath." She saw Zevran raised an eyebrow at that. "But I believe you. I don't know how you stayed hidden so well though."

"When you're life depends on staying out of sight you tend to make sure you succeed."

Inara grunted, but didn't say anything. She turned back to the fire as the logs snapped and glowed through their slow destruction. So much emotion swirled inside, more than she knew she could handle. She shoved it down, kept them out of her thoughts and her heart lest she let them consume her. She wasn't that person anymore. That Inara died when Solan exhaled his last breath. It was too dangerous to be that person, with no one to balance her, to take the heat of her fiery and unpredictable emotions. No one else could be trusted. No one else could have brought her to life like he did.

Better to be dead inside and wait until the outside matched. She could see the silvery scars on her forearms like veins of moonlight on the tender parts of her skin. She knew that was no longer an option, that she'd been forced into this roll to fight these demons outside, in the world, that threaten all. Better to fight them than the ones she kept inside. At least they offered a true death instead of slow, endless torment.

"I remember how he held you in his arms," Zevran said, breaking the silence. "He walked you out of the House while you shook with rage even after they paid you for what they did. He picked you up when you were shaking too much to walk on your own and carried you."

Inara closed her eyes, tried to push the memory away, fend off its attack on her cold citadel. She knew it was failing, but she couldn't stop the inevitable.

"You kept apologizing. That you didn't mean to hurt him. That you didn't mean for it to happen again. And every time he would tell you that it would be ok. That he was fine. That this time, it was a good thing. That you did the right thing, even if it was for the wrong reasons. I didn't understand it, but I don't think I was meant to."

All Inara could do was shake her head in agreeance. She knew why she kept apologizing. She knew that there was always the possibility that it would happen again, but the next time there won't be anyone to bring her back from the other side of insanity. That she might be lost forever then.

Not that she cared anymore.

"I watched him take care of you. Your wounds both inside and out. And I watched you curl up and wail with such ferocity and pain that I thought you were dying. He kept others away and sent them off so that no one was there to see you in that state."

"You certainly saw a lot then."

The fire's warmth paled in comparison to the heat of embarrassment on her cheeks. Horrified at what Zevran told her she couldn't bear to look at him. Even then she wouldn't. Those eyes in Solan's face wouldn't look at her with the patience and compassion of love. Only a vicious mockery of her feelings and loss would meet her, she was sure of it.

"Inara," Zevran said, calm and quiet. It nearly stopped her breath, so similar in tone it was to how Solan said her name when he called her back from the abyss. "Inara, my dear Warden, please listen."

She pressed her lips together to keep a pitiful moan to escape her throat. She bit into both insides of her cheeks and clenched her jaw as she fought back unwanted memories. Her skin tingled as Zevran's light touch turned her face toward his. She closed her eyes, not wanting to see that sarcastic smirk and the laughter in his eyes. She wondered again why she spared his life other than to torture herself further.

"Please, _cara_ , look at me."

Any tone of mirth or mocking was absent when he spoke. Inara could hear the sadness and concern. She opened her eyes. If only to prove that he was playing some sick trick on her.

His eyes were wet with unshed tears. Inara was so shocked she pulled away from his hand on her chin. In the weeks that had passed with him along everything had been a jest, an innuendo, an outright come on. Inara thought he didn't have a single empathetic bone in his body until this moment.

"I am truly sorry, for all you have suffered. To be a reminder for all you have lost." He took a deep breath, and as he sighed it out his shoulders slumped, but he didn't look away. "I understand, at least a portion of what you might be feeling. I can see it in your eyes. I cannot change it just as I can't change my face. All I can do is make you this promise. I swear to you that I will never use what I know to bring you harm. I will never be a person I am not."

He looked so genuine. He looked at her as if he had never opened himself to anyone's scrutiny before. There was fear, and not a little shame. So similar to how she felt in that moment. It was too much for her to take, the final hit to her cracked walls and they came tumbling down.

She had to go. To get away from there before the hurt and the anger could no longer be controlled.

"I need to leave." It wasn't even a whisper. It was lighter. Carried off with the slightest wind. The fickle flames were stronger than her voice. She felt as though she was collapsing inward, the whole of her being forcibly crushed into the size of a pinhead. When it could get no smaller it would explode.

Inara stumbled as she stood, nearly stepped in the open flames if Zevran hadn't reacted quick enough to stop her. She tore herself away from his grasp. Her first instinct was to lash out at him, but she couldn't. He was Solan to her in that moment. She couldn't harm him.

So she ran. Swift and silent into the forest. She had only one thought. She had to run fast and far, away from the others so they wouldn't hear and search for her. She didn't want them to see what real rage looks like. Raw and violent and pitiful. So she ran away from everyone, including herself, to release her inner demons.

She never thought that others would be watching. She never thought that anyone would follow.


End file.
